Pontiac had troubled waters ahead in the late ’90s. A lot of the iconic carmaker’s fans wouldn’t have imagined it, but the company would last barely a decade longer before being closed down for good. But Pontiac wasn’t going out without a fight. From the outside, the company couldn’t look more invigorated, bringing out a raft of new models and concepts around the turn of the millennium that suggested it was simply in a phase of modernizing to Y2K needs.
But looking back, Pontiac seemed to have a habit of being, if anything, a few years too early with its cars. One concept in particular showed that Pontiac was ahead of the game, but it is now just another memory of what could have been.
Pontiac Was Struggling To Find Its Way In The ’90s
The troubles of Pontiac in the ’90s can be traced back two decades. The oil crisis of the early ’70s, and the emissions regulations that followed, had burnt down the thriving muscle car party almost as quickly as it had started. Pontiac had invented the whole muscle car genre single-handedly with the GTO, and made its name in powerful V8 coupes, so it was particularly hit by the end of the V8 power wars.
However, Pontiac still managed to capture the zeitgeist, even if Bandit’s Trans Am was down to 200 horsepower, and Kitt had to resort to its fictional “Turbo Boost” to win any drag races. By the late ’80s, Pontiac was one of the last surviving firms to offer muscle cars, including the epic Trans Am 20th Anniversary. By the ’90s, Pontiac still offered the Firebird Trans Am and Formula, with the Firehawk option offering buyers a hit of affordable muscle car action, even when most people had gone and bought a Golf GTI or Subaru Impreza.
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The Company Needed A Bold New Model To Save It
The problem for Pontiac was the second Golden Age of the muscle car was still ten years off — if only it had realized that — and a modern-yet-retro Firebird would have been just the ticket to fight the S197 Ford Mustang. Nevertheless, Pontiac still kept fighting to find its foot in the modern car market in the late ’90s. Along came a wealth of concepts that tested the waters for what Pontiac customers wanted, including bonkers-sounding machines like the Montana Thunder, an SUV minivan. But out of all these wild designs came one that should have stuck. It was a bold Firebird/Trans Am sedan that could have been the perfect foil for groundbreaking four-door coupes such as the incoming Mercedes-Benz CLS and was even along the same lines as the slightly-forgotten Aston Martin Rapide. But what happened to it?
The Pontiac Rageous Was A Brave New World For Pontiac
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Let’s get one thing out of the way first. The Pontiac Rageous (or should it be ‘rageous) has one of the worst names in history, coming in like something middle-aged execs would imagine young people writing on FaceSpace in the late ’90s. The name aside, the concept that appeared at the 1997 North American International Auto Show (alongside roller bladers) was actually pretty interesting.
Yes, the design is overwrought, with the de rigeur three-spoke alloys and a not very pedestrian-friendly-looking snout, but Pontiac was on to something. The four-door coupe featured a 5.7-liter V8, with around 315 horsepower and 335 lb-ft of torque. Weighing 4,600 lbs, 60 mph arrived in a sprightly 5.5 seconds. The power was sent to the rear wheels through a five-speed manual transmission.
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The Rageous Foretold The Market Trend For Practical Four-Door Coupes
The glass upper hatchback has a shoulder line that is like a reverse Subaru SVX, and a two-piece rear hatch with drop-down lower tailgate which kind of offered the same practical way of thinking as the BMW 5-Series GT, which was a decade away. Along with two standard front doors, there was also a pair of rear suicide doors. What you got from the Rageous, along with a silly name, was a muscle car for the middle-aged parent, which is a segment that really kicked off a few years later with the likes of the Mercedes-AMG CLS55, Porsche Panamera, and Audi RS7. The Rageous even had a large trunk lined with rubber for easy cleaning after a weekend away with the kids. It was just a shame that Pontiac’s crystal ball seemed to be on the blink.
The Rageous Wasn’t Enough To Save Pontiac
Channeling a kind of skunkworks, stick-it-to-the-man behavior that sold muscle cars in the ’60s, John Schinella, Pontiac division brand-character director said: “It provoked the hell out of upper management. When Pontiac comes out of the closet, we really come out.” But it didn’t take long for the Rageous to go back in the closet for good, with the car never getting the green light. Had the company gone with the car, they may have had a winner. Using Trans Am components, it would have been cheap and reliable, and worked as a more rakish alternative to the soon-to-arrive new Dodge Charger. But Pontiac went with another idea instead.
The Future For Pontiac Turned Out To Be Aztek Shaped
The fact that Walter White drove an Aztek tells you all you need to know. The Aztek of 2001-2005 was a crazy and desperate-looking creation with slightly bizarre styling that didn’t really make much sense most of the time. The influence of the Rageous is clear to see with the moldings on the bottom of the doors, beak-like front, and even the expansive glasshouse. The Aztek, despite being a bit dorky looking, was also ahead of its time, with cars like the Kia Soul also bringing a sense of unique mom- and dad-mobile to the market.
Pontiac also used some of the styling of the Rageous for the G8, adding the concept’s sharp styling language to a Holden Commodore. The G8 in GXP form was in essence, a production version of the Rageous, essentially a four-door muscle car but far more conservatively styled. It didn’t sell well, perhaps as a result, with just 1,829 of the 37,000 G8s being GXP models. Who knows, maybe a more upmarket and sporty-looking muscle sedan might have captured the public’s imagination? But in the end, no one will ever know, with Pontiac shut down two years after the 2008 financial crisis.
Buying A G8 — And An Aztek Today
While the Rageous might not have been the last hurrah for Pontiac, you can still enjoy the models that were. The Aztek is something of a cult classic today, thanks mostly to Breaking Bad. That said, you can still pick one up pretty cheap. The Aztek, which was sold between 2001 and 2005 and came fitted with a 3.4-liter V6, has an average price of $7,400 (Classic.com). A 2009 G8 GXP has a good condition price of $24,700, with the 500-horsepower 2009 Pontiac G8 GXP SLP Firehawk Supercharged coming in at $40,700. With Pontiac looking like it won’t be coming back anytime soon, the secondhand market will have to do for our fix of the brand in 2026. Fingers crossed that we might see new Pontiacs one day.
Sources: Classic.com; Hagerty.com
